


Der Haifisch

by Writing-Rammstein (writingfanfic)



Category: Rammstein
Genre: F/M, Fisherman/Mermaid!AU, mermaid!au, mild body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-27
Updated: 2018-02-27
Packaged: 2019-03-24 19:55:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13818321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writingfanfic/pseuds/Writing-Rammstein
Summary: For the prompt: 'I have this crazy mermaid AU in my head where the reader is a mermaid and meets with Till everyday (maybe on a small island outside the coast)... And then the even crazier idea would be a mermaid AU where Till is the merman. You can choose whatever you like to write best.'/Und der Haifisch, der hat Tränen.../





	Der Haifisch

Every day, the fisherman comes down to the end of the pier, and waits.

After he has tied his boat up safely, still in his ratty old bottle-green jumper and waders, he walks down, and sits there in the soft, orange sunset, waiting. Sometimes he will bring his radio with him and sing quietly; sometimes, he will bring a net he is patiently mending with his rough, course hands; sometimes, he brings a beer, to drink slowly as he watches the horizon; sometimes, he brings nothing at all, and simply waits, patiently content to sit inside his own mind until…

You flick your brown tail, spattered with white stars, and propel yourself forward. He is always here, always, at the end of every day - your heart leaps like the flying fish out at sea, and you dip below the water, looking up - he hasn’t noticed you, and you pop out of the water, beaming at him.

“<Hello,>” he says, gently, a smile crossing his weather-beaten face, and you reach up, taking his hand gently.

“<Hello, Till,>” you sigh, in return. It has taken you time to learn German - without gills, he never had a hope of learning your language, or anything spoken by a mermaid. “<You are still here.>”

“<I always will be, my beautiful,>” he says, and you feel yourself blushing. He sits on the edge of the pier, and you paddle back a little. You know it isn’t safe to be so close to land, but… you would give everything up for him. To miss a day of seeing him would not be worth it. You wish he would come with you, but he is a human - most of them have families and jobs. Attachments to the land. _And_ , you think, quietly, _we do not mate as humans do_. You have heard about human males and their fetishization of your species. But Till… always seemed… different.

“<How was your day?>” you ask, and he tells you of the fish he caught; of the storms he saw, but was wise enough to avoid, storms you had floated beneath the surface with your brothers and sisters, watching in fascination and giggling as the lightning had spooked your mother. You tell him in turn of hours spent scavenging amongst the ships for items to trade, of chasing the sharks. You tell him, particularly excited, of a whale you have chased, and shamefacedly show him a cut on your tail - it has begun to heal, with the saltwater and your natural healing ability, but he smiles at you, and wishes you, in his low, beautiful voice, that it heals quickly.

“<I do not know how long I will be here.>”

“<Huh?>” you ask, eyes wide, and he shakes his head.

“<Every day, the catch gets less and less.>” His eyes are fixed on the sea again. “<I can’t afford to keep sailing out there.>” He looks sad for a moment, although a smile still plays upon his lips, and you look down into the depths.

“<You could come with me.>” Your words are quiet, and he looks at you. “<You would have to give up being human. You would have to leave everything.>” Pain fills his eyes as he thinks about it - you knew it. He has someone he doesn’t want to leave behind - a wife. A child. Something. “<Or I can chase the fish to your ship, if that would help.>”

“<How does one join you?>” he asks, and you look at him.

“<A kiss from a mermaid.>” He looks at you. “<That’s all. You would become a merman, and you could live free of mortal worries.>” You swallow sharply. “<The price is your human life. You would be giving up your loved ones.>” You feel so awful for even suggesting it, but the gentle, kind man before you… you cannot bear to think of him giving up the life he loves. “<I am sorry I mentioned it…>”

“<I have nobody.>” His voice is soft. “<I have nobody to stay for, anyway.>” You wonder what kind of lives human live in that moment; you hear from him only the tales of when he is on the water. You realise that you know nothing about him, and sigh, reaching up for his hand again. You want to know. “<I do not know what life as a merman would be like.>”

“<You can be one with the sea. For as long as you live,>” you whisper gently, and he nods.

“<You would not eat me, would you? You have the tail of a shark,>” he teases. He said that on the first day you met him - the day he cut your tail out of his net, and you fell to the deck of his boat and cried because _this is how mermaids die_ , your mother had told you, _mermaids are caught and human men keep them_.

You have caught a human man, and everything in your soul - for you certainly have one - is telling you not to let him go.

“<Never. But…>” You swallow nervously. “<It will hurt.>”

He looks at you, and then slides into the water in one smooth movement; he bobs underwater for a moment, and then resurfaces, shaking his head. He has never done this - never been on the same level as you. You take his face in your hands for a moment, and he smiles.

“<I have been hurt for a long time,>” he says, gently. “<In many ways. If you only hurt me once, you have hurt me less than anything else in my life, for a long time.>”

“<I don’t want to hurt you at all,>” you say, quietly. “<Promise me. Promise me you’re sure you want this.>” He sighs, scrubbing his face with wet, rough palms, and nods.

“<I do.>”

“<Take your shoes off.>” He looks at you. “<Do it.>” He kicks them off - you see the yellow plastic bob away. “<That’s environmentally irresponsible.>” You feel shaky. You hope this works. You have never… turned anyone.

“<We’ll catch them later.>” He grins at you. “<I want to be with the sea.>”

You nod.

“<And you.>”

That makes your stomach flip like a seal doing tricks, and you blink, staring at him.

“<I would not kiss a mermaid only once,>” he says, softly, and you swim over to him, taking a deep breath.

“<Last chance,>” you say, and he looks down, before leaning forward. His lips press to yours - human lips are so warm, so soft, and you smile at him, your heart pounding in your chest, before you take another deep breath, and kiss him again.

As you breathe air into his lungs, you pull him down, down, deep under the waves, and as you kiss him, breathing the air into his lungs he - hopefully - won’t need for much longer, you close your eyes, before jabbing your thumbnails hard into his throat and slicing.

He begins to struggle as you back away - he’s fighting for air and the blood he’s losing, so quickly, from the slices you made in his throat. It takes everything in your power not to dive back in and drag him to the surface - the wounds on his throat would be lethal by now anyway. He will either die down here and bob to the shore, or…

His struggles are seizing, and he looks at you, almost betrayed, before his eyes close wearily - it almost looks as if he falls asleep, and he has swallowed the water already. You close your eyes. If you’ve killed him… you’ll never forgive yourself. You’ll drag him to the surface and beach yourself. Carve your tail in two, and die suffering…

You swim closer, and kiss him, gently, eyes still closed, and when you open your eyes, his are open too. His skin has paled from loss of blood - no, it’s more than that - it’s the same blue-tinged pink as yours, and his eyes have gone from the green of fluorite to an almost mother-of-pearl sheen. You look down, and stare in amazement as you see his legs have fused - they are not quite the tail they will be, but they are forming, slowly, into the dark, steel grey of a school shark.

“<Pearl?>” he says, quietly, and you hold him, spinning around in glee as you cheer gleefully in your own language. “<It worked?>”

“<It worked!>” You begin to tear off his human clothes - they’re not really a thing, down here, where skin and scale blend. “<It worked.>” Finally he’s there - grey, rough sharkskin blending into pale-pink torso, and you trace your hands over his scars. You are glad your shark tears blend in, down here in the saltwater, and he cannot see them. “<It worked.>”

He holds you close, and looks up at the surface; you can see one of his yellow shoes, bobbing, and wonder for a sad moment if he regrets, but then he kisses you again, a look of wonder crossing his face as he regards himself.

“<You must meet my family,>” you say firmly, and take his hand, kissing him once more, and he smiles.“

<Lead the way,>” he says, gently, and together you swim, hand in hand, through the shoals of silver and the bright dancing colours of the ocean.


End file.
